


under a green sea, I saw him drowning

by heartofstanding



Category: 14th Century CE RPF
Genre: (implied between Holland and Joan), Aftermath of Violence, Angst, Battle of Crécy, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Past Underage, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Siege of Calais, Teenages with Trauma, Trauma, teenage soldiers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-10
Updated: 2020-03-10
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:42:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23092798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartofstanding/pseuds/heartofstanding
Summary: Joan of Kent notices a change in her 16-year-old cousin, Edward, after the Battle of Crécy.
Relationships: Edward the Black Prince & Joan of Kent, background Joan of Kent/Thomas Holland
Comments: 8
Kudos: 9





	under a green sea, I saw him drowning

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cheshireArcher](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cheshireArcher/gifts).



**Siege of Calais, December 1346**

When Joan sees Edward again, her heart goes still in her chest. He’s changed. She isn’t surprised – everyone has been talking about how brave he was at Crécy and she expected he would taller, broader around the shoulders – less of a boy he and more of a man. His body is unchanged, no taller or broader than before, but he is still different. He stands quiet and stern at his father’s shoulder and when he senses her gaze, he merely inclines his head with a half smile. He doesn’t grin brightly at her, doesn’t fidget as though he’s impatient for these formalities to be over. Worse is the unease he appears to feel with his own father – he is perfectly respectful but his smiles are false, his eyes wary.

When the formalities are done and the king has taken the queen by the hand, Joan steps forward. She wants to go to Edward and find out what has gone wrong, what has happened to him. But Salisbury is suddenly at her side, wanting to speak to her, his hand gently grasping her wrist and she reminds herself that he is her husband – or one of them, at least – and Edward is only her friend so it is good and proper that she speaks to Salisbury before she does Edward. She smiles at Salisbury – he is not a bad man, he is only the wrong husband.

When she looks for Edward, later, he is gone.

*

Joan doesn’t talk to Edward. He evades her attempts to find him – quite possibly because he’s avoiding everyone. At one dinner, Joan sees Philippa talking to him and studies the polite, fixed smile on his face, the worry on Philippa’s. The queen reaches out to tuck Edward’s hair behind his ear and he flinches away.

Joan thinks he’s losing weight. His clothes hang loosely on him, his hair has lost its sheen. The only people he seems to speak to are the people he fought side-by-side with.

Joan tries to find out what’s wrong. Salisbury is of no help.

‘He more than earnt his spurs at Crécy,’ he says. ‘You wouldn’t understand – you’re a woman, you’ll never see a battle.’

Philippa just seems worried. Her lips go still and unsmiling when Joan asks, in an innocent voice, if Edward is alright. She bends her head low over her embroidery so Joan can’t see her face.

‘He’ll be fine,’ Philippa says vaguely. ‘Just give him time.’

Joan doesn’t ask the king. It doesn’t feel right when Edward seems wary of him. But she even manages to steal a few moments with Thomas Holland before she’s spoken one word to Edward. That should be impossible. It is absurd that she can speak to her first and truest husband who no one wishes her to see ever again but the boy she has known all her life melts into the shadows.

‘He’s sulking,’ Thomas tells her but he’s sulking too – they don’t have time for more than a few stolen words and he’s upset she’s chosen to use them to ask about Edward.

‘Why?’

Thomas shrugs. ‘How should I know? Everyone’s saying he won his spurs but that’s not good enough. Maybe he’s shamed he pissed himself.’

‘He _what_?’

‘Most men do. You try getting your cock out for a piss in full armour in the middle of a battle. Now there’s a thought, you in armour.’

His hand rests daringly on her waist, squeezes her hip. She shudders and squirms in his grip, senses the unsaid words in the heat of his eyes: _I will have you again, one day._ She tells herself she can’t wait. The voices around her swell and she steps back, letting no one see her linger over Thomas. She turns and looks for Edward but she still can’t find him.

*

Joan isn’t looking for Edward when she does find him. She’s walking through the camp, searching for a place where she can meet Thomas in secret. Where they can be man and wife again and plot their next move. She finds some narrow path, picks her way through the overgrown grass and comes to a small, abandoned-looking tent. It’s smaller than the room she shares with Philippa’s ladies but if she brings a few blankets, she could make a comfortable enough bed to lie down with Thomas.

She steps inside, wanting to make sure that no one else has claimed it and stops short. _Edward._ He’s sitting in the corner, on a roughly made stool, hunched in on himself and sobbing soundlessly.

‘Edward?’

His head snaps up and he stares at her, his eyes red-rimmed and huge. Sharply, he averts his face and begins to scrub away his tears but his shoulders are still shaking. She steps to him, lays her hand against his wet cheek and draws his face to her hip, wrapping her arms around him. His arms clutch at her.

It reminds her of the time she had come home from Gascony, a wife newly made and newly abandoned, and all she wanted to do was hide away and cry but Edward had found her and hugged her tightly. He was too young to understand why she was upset and she had promised Thomas not to tell anyone what they’d done but it felt so good to be held and to be loved simply and painlessly.

‘What’s happened?’ she asks. ‘What’s wrong?’

He shrugs, hiccups a sob and shakes his head hopelessly. Her fingers stroke through his hair, untangle the knots that have been allowed to accumulate. She finds a long scar stretched across his scalp and bites the inside of her cheek to stop herself from crying out. No one said he had been hurt. He shudders when she touches it.

‘Joan,’ he whispers.

‘What’s happened?’ she says.

He shrugs. ‘I'm starting to think I'm just fucked up. Well. Not starting.’

‘Edward?’ Her heart hurts. How can that cheerful boy she’d known become this?

‘It’s all I can see,’ he says. ‘When I sleep, when I wake – I just keep seeing it, I feel it echoing around me all the time.’

‘What? What do you see?’

‘Battle. People dying. God, Joan, there were so many. And I – I did it. I killed people. I took my sword, my axe, my dagger and I used them. I cut open their flesh and made them fall. Left them to die. I had to. _I had to_.’

‘You had to,’ she echoes, her stomach turning.

Had Thomas done the same thing? Had the king? No, she remembers, he watched from a windmill. This time – but he must have before. Archers, men-at-arms, barons, earls, dukes, princes and king all go to war and all kill people.

‘You had to,’ Joan says and this time she believes herself. ‘If you hadn’t, they would have killed you. And everyone – everyone says you that you proved yourself a mighty warrior.’

‘I don’t want to be good at it,’ he says, voice rising. ‘I don’t want to be good at war, I don’t want to be a good soldier.’

‘I didn’t – they said you were brave,’ Joan says desperately.

‘If I was brave,’ he whispers, so quietly that she strains to hear him. ‘If I was brave, I would’ve dropped my sword, let them have me.’

‘Then they would’ve killed you. Our forces would have lost.’

He nods stiffly. ‘That’s what Chandos says. If I had fallen, we could have lost. But I don’t understand it. I mean, yes, I understand it. But is it better to kill for the sake of our kingdom or die so my hands are clean of blood? I think the latter – yet if our side was annihilated, our kingdom brought to its knees because I gave in, I let myself die rather than become a killer – are my hands really clean?’

‘I don’t know,’ Joan says quietly. It is such a tangle that she thinks even the most learned theologians would be unable to answer it. She strokes his hair. ‘But I am glad you are still here.’

‘Sometimes I am too. I was so scared. But – _God._ I can see their faces, hear their voices. I know I killed them. That they are dead because I valued my life worth more than theirs.’

She bites her lip, bends to rest her cheek against his hair. There are no words she can offer that will mend the injury done to him, no comfort she can offer that will heal him. She holds him tighter.

‘Will you tell me?’ she says. ‘What happened? It may help – to put it into words. To tell someone who wasn’t there.’

‘You don’t want to know.’

‘I do,’ she says, cradling the back of his skull. ‘I want to know – I want to help you. I know it won’t be like the stories and songs. I know it will be bloody and horrible and terrifying. But I want to know. I want you to tell me.’

*

They sit, cross-legged, on the floor. There is a distance between them that seems necessary – she can reach out and touch him but they are not pressed tightly together. There is room for the ugliness to come out and sit between them without drowning them.

‘It was chaos,’ he says. ‘The noise of it. It’s unbelievable. You dig in and you think, _I’m going to die_ and yet – your heart’s right up here. It’s pounding so loudly that it seems impossible that it could ever stop. The waiting’s intolerable. The start’s intolerable. The whole bloody lot of it is intolerable.’

She lays her hand over his knee. He takes a shaky breath, buries his face in his hands.

‘I’ve tried to make sense of it,’ he says. ‘Tried to work it out. This happened and this happened and then this happened and so on until it ends. But I can’t. It’s too messy. I don’t remember some things, I remember other things so clearly it’s like they’ve never stopped. It’s like they’re right in front of me, going on forever.’

‘Tell me,’ she says. ‘It doesn’t have to make sense.’

He does. Every agonising moment. It is confusing and disturbing and she can’t make sense of anything but his pain. Her heart falls apart and she holds his hand tighter, wills the telling of this to help him. Wills that telling her will piece together the ruin of his heart and make it whole again.

There is blood and pain and death. She feels the weight of a sword in her hand, how it drags her down as the hours pass. The men scrambling to kill, to stay alive. The fear burning at her gut, driving her on. Forgetting all the lessons she has learnt – how to hold herself, how to fight. Lashing out. Taking a hit, feeling it jar through her bones – a reminder to pay attention, to remember what she has been taught. Defence and offence. More death. More killing. Being hit, forced onto her knees and the pain in her head, the desperation to live even as darkness fell. Waking on the ground, hands pulling at her and struggling up. Not knowing who was friend and who was foe for one terrifying moment. Fear in her blood, desperation in her lungs, bile in her throat. More blood. Exhaustion clinging to her bones. The shout of men’s voices, dying and undying, echoing in her ears. The axe heavy in her hand, her sword notched and broken. More death. More killing.

And then it stops and all she can feel is the fear and desperation clinging to her, making her struggle to breathe and to hold herself within her body. Sliding the axe back into her belt with trembling determination when all she wants to do is drop it and flee to the hills.

‘In the morning,’ Edward says, ‘Father and I – we walked through the field. Looked at the bodies.’

Edward’s voice is quiet.

‘He said – what did I think of it all? Going into battle. Fighting. He asked, did I think it was good sport? I couldn’t answer. All I felt was shame. And now I think he looks at me and sees weakness, sees my fear. Now I look at him and think he sees war as a game.’

Joan bites her lip, moves onto her knees and hugs him tightly, drawing his head to her breast.

‘It’s over,’ she says. ‘It’s over, Edward.’

‘Until the next one.’

She squeezes her eyes shut. There will be more battles. Always. If they ever win France, they will talk of Crusades and Holy Wars and Edward will have to go and fight each of these wars beside his father.

‘Then,’ she says, ‘you will talk to me and tell me what it was like. You will share your burden and not let it consume you.’

‘It’s not fair to you.’

‘I don’t care,’ she says. ‘I want to know. I want to help. Let me.’

He stares up at her, his eyes wide and gives a small, stiff nod.

*

She thinks it’s important that he goes out into the sun so when he seems more settled and surer of himself, she takes his arm and leads him outside. He tips his head back and stares up at the sky and she studies him, wonders how much more he will change in their lifetimes. But she will love the Edward who is and the Edward who will be as much as she loved the boy.

She reaches out and takes his hand, pulling him to her side.

‘Right,’ she says. ‘You are to escort me back to the royal lodgings on the longest route. You are to feel the sun on your back, the breeze on your face and know that you are alive and there is no battle here to fight.’

‘The siege—’

‘Is being fought by other men today,’ she says, reaching to lay her fingers across his lips. ‘And you are here, with me, and right now, life is fine.’

He’s silent for a long moment, studying her with his bright blue eyes.

‘Right now, life is fine’ he says, ‘because I am here with you.’

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for a prompt given to me by CheshireArcher and inspired by a conversation we had about the Black Prince's mental health after reading an article by Paul Booth that posited the Prince's ill-health from 1367 to his dead in 1376 was due to a mental breakdown of some sorts. I was also reminded of a comment in Richard Barber's biography of the Prince where he was said to have 'said nothing and was ashamed' when his father (Edward III) asked him what he thought of battle and whether it was good sport in the aftermath of the Battle of Crécy.
> 
> The title comes from Wilfred Owen's _Dulce et Decorum Est_.
> 
> Joan of Kent came to the Siege of Calais for Christmas as part of Philippa of Hainault's retinue. By this stage, she was married to both Thomas Holland and William Montagu, Earl of Salisbury. Determining who knew of Holland marriage is largely an exercise in speculation with no clear answers - all I decided, when writing this, was that the Black Prince didn't know and enough people knew something had happened between Joan and Holland that she was discouraged from meeting with him. Similarly, I wasn't able to find reliable information on whether Salisbury or Holland were present at the siege - it's not impossible that they were and they served well as sources of information that Joan could turn to. 
> 
> The tension between the Prince and his father is based on speculation by Michael Jones that there was some type of split between them in later years - it seemed plausible to me that this might have had earlier beginnings in light of comment Richard Barber made about the Prince's behaviour after Crécy.
> 
>  **Sources**  
>  Richard Barber, _Edward, Prince of Wales and Aquitaine: A Biography of the Black Prince_ , Boydell and Brewer, 1978)  
> Paul Booth, ‘The Last Week of the Life of Edward the Black Prince’, in _Contact and Exchange in Later Medieval Europe: Essays in Honour of Malcolm Vale_ , ed. Hannah Skoda, Patrick Lantschner and R.L.J. Shaw (The Boydell Press, Woodbridge, 2012)  
> Anthony Goodman, _Joan the Fair Maid of Kent: A Fourteenth Century Princess and her World_ (Boydell Press, 2017)  
> Michael Jones, _The Black Prince_ (Head of Zeus, 2017)  
> Penny Lawne, _Joan of Kent: The First Princess of Wales_ (Amberley, 2015)  
> 


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